2017 Turkish Referendum: Did Turkey’s “better educated” vote “No”?

Year 2019, Volume: 5 Issue: 10, 1 - 9, 30.04.2019

İlhama Gasimzade

Abstract

On April 16, 2017, Turkey hosted a historical referendum which attracted
everybody’s attention to the referendum results. The aim of the referendum was
to reveal Turkish population’s opinion regarding the proposed constitutional
amendments which are supposed to accelerate the shift of the country from
parliamentary democracy to presidential autocracy. As the results of referendum
carry historical importance, it is important to interrogate the voting behavior
of Turkish people in this referendum. This paper investigates the relationship
between 2017 Turkish referendum results and higher education level of
population. Multiple regression model has been used to find out whether
people’s education level affected their votes in the referendum. This article
is the first assessment of the plebiscite results by province.

Keywords

Turkish referendum, higher education, voting behavior, regression analysis

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